Her grandmother was an edgy woman. Sharp cheekbones, a sharp tongue, a posture that said I've been holding myself together for seventy years and I'm not stopping now.
She did not bake cookies. Did not do the delicate grandma things you see in commercials. On the back porch, she smoked Parliaments and delivered awkward truths at dinner; she had opinions on everything from politics to how you were raising your kids (wrong, always wrong).
She had only one gentle feature: her hands. Hands that had truly worked in factories during the war, in kitchens feeding five children on nothing, in gardens feeding the family when money was an idea other people possessed. Hands with knowledge her mouth would never voice.
At nineteen she left with a husband she hardly knew and a suitcase. Learned a language that tasted like pebbles in her mouth, raised kids in a country that did not want her, landed in one. And she never objected. Not even once. Died the same manner she lived, on her terms, expecting nothing, providing everything, softening for no one.
Someone called her challenging at the burial.
She was.